37. Former California fort : ORD. closed in September 1994. Fort Ord was one of the most attractive locations of any U.S. Army post, because of its proximity to the beach and California weather. Would make a good trip destination.

39. Disease cause : GERM

40. Makes amends : ATONES

43. Puts in a new pot, say : REPLANTS. A short clip, a song about Harry Potter and repotting the Mandrakes.

10. Boxer Max : BAER. One of the most colorful figures of his day, Baer(1909 - 1959) enjoyed life in the limelight(like Ali and most boxers). He was the brother of twice World Champion boxing contender Buddy Baer and father of actor Max Baer, Jr., known to two generations as Jethro Bodine of the Beverly Hillbillies.

Hereare three fantastic photos of our dashing pilot Dudley, whose initials in real life is DD (Yay, Lois!). Please click on each photo for enlargement. I love the wedding one very much. Beautiful couple. Argyle

Aug 30, 2010

Theme: Rose's Boys - The nicknames (in age older) of three Rose Kennedy's sons are the start of the first three theme entries (all in plural forms). And the forth entry is where they might have been found.

54A. Hyannis Port site where the starts of 20-, 30- and 41-Across were often found : KENNEDY COMPOUND. Just a little place out on Cape Cod, MA.

Argyle here.

Very Friday-ish grid in terms of total word count (74) and block count (34). Lots of non-theme long words for a Monday (four 9s & two 7s). But the liberal use of esses detracts from an otherwise reasonable Monday for me.

Across:

1. Stringed instrument that may be taller than its player : HARP. Image

5. Left the room : WENT

9. Defame in print : LIBEL. Defame in speech is slander.

14. Chevy subcompact since 2004 : AVEO. An automobile manufactured by GM Daewoo (the South Korean subsidiary of General Motors) and marketed globally in 120 countries – prominently as the Chevrolet Aveo(ah-VAY-o).

15. Native Nebraskan : OTOE. There are many different clues for this one tribe.

16. Slip away to tie the knot : ELOPE

17. Phone sounds : DIAL TONES

19. "Manhattan" director Woody : ALLEN

22. What you eat, to a dietitian : INTAKE

23. Canonized person : SAINT

24. Gallery fare : ART

26. Prefix with intellectual : PSEUDO

36. Vicinity : AREA

37. Qatari chieftains : EMIRS. Arabs

38. __ kwon do : TAE

39. Valued possession : ASSET

40. It means nothing to a Nicaraguan : NADA. Spanish.

43. Totally soak : DRENCH

45. Sun. church delivery : SER. Sunday sermon.

46. Jazz combo rhythm providers : DRUMS

49. Ice cream treat : SUNDAE

58. Skyscraper girder : I-BEAM. Not Z, not L, not H but good old I-beam.

59. Clan members : RELATIVES

60. Hippo ending : DROME. Hippodrome was a Greek stadium for horse racing and chariot racing. The name is derived from the Greek words "hippos ("horse") and "dromos" ("race" or "course").

18. Hungarian dessert wines : TOKAYS. Tokaji is the name of the wines from the region of Tokaj-Hegyalja in Hungary. The name Tokaji (Tokay) is used for labeling wines from this wine district. This region is noted for its sweet wines made from grapes affected by noble rot, a style of wine which has a long history in this region. Noble rot is the benevolent form of a grey fungus, Botrytis cinerea, affecting wine grapes.

111A. Where legendary firefighters are honored? : HALL OF FLAME. Hall of Fame. Long A.

119A. Quartet of couch potatoes? : THE FLAB FOUR. The Fab Four. The Beatles. Short A.

I don't get the title. "El", yes, why "Week"?

111A is basically a repeat of 43A Long A scheme. Maybe Doug can't find a Long I or Long U (or short U) phrase with 11-letters. I can think of Fight Song, Fighting Irish, neither works. In a funk with short U sounds nice. But then flunk is a verb.

Very smooth solving. Some of the long Downs are just awesome. Several baseball and golf references today:

123. City with many pits : RENO. Pits here refer to "the pits", the worst, correct? (From Argyle: Wow, PIT can mean a lot of things. In this case it means the area or room of a casino containing gambling tables. In bowling, it is the area where the fallen pins gather. Of course, there are the pits in racing, too. And many more!)

124. Set the dial to : TUNE IN

125. Toni Morrison novel : SULA. What's it about?

126. "Only Time" singer : ENYA

127. Units of work : ERGS

128. __ Fables : AESOP'S

129. Anthem opener : O SAY

Down:

1. Red leader? : INFRA. Leader to the word infrared.

2. Individual efforts : SOLOS

3. Matchmaker's supply : PHOSPHORUS. Was thinking of the marriage matchmaker. Not one who makes real matches.

5. Monastic title : FRA

6. Heaps at a quarry : ROCK PILES

7. "... who lived in __" : A SHOE. "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe...".

Aug 28, 2010

The puzzle is framed by triple stacks of horizontal 11s at the upper right and bottom left, intersecting another vertical 11 and triple columns of 7s on each end. Another triple columns of vertical 7s in the upper left and lower right completes the basic skeleton of the grid. The eight 11s are:

4A. Workout apparatus : STAIRMASTER. The only one word 11.

16A. Old fortune-telling site : PENNY ARCADE. Have never heard of this term. Is it in a mall?

18A. Carried out by : ON THE PART OF. Can you give me an example of how the clue & answer equates?

56A. Pigmentation variations? : SKIN DIVERSITY. Skin Divers. Skin diving is defined as "the sport of swimming under water with flippers and a face mask and usually with a snorkel rather than a portable air supply". Not a familiar term to me.

Though the changing pattern for 29A and 56A is the same, adding ITY to a S ending phrase, the original words are profoundly different.

It's a carefully selected & rather exhaustive theme set. Not easy to attach ITY to any noun phrase and come up with a sensible new phrase ending with a different root word. Constructors give lots of considerations to their themes.

I thought of author (Anonymous Author) & authority. But the two derived from the same word, not to mention ANONYMOUS AUTHORITY has 18 letters. Equal & equality do not work either. John Major (former British PM) might though, since Major is a proper name here. Major & Majority. But then how do you clue JOHN MAJORITY?

Tough puzzle. Tough cluing.

Across:

1. W.E.B. Du Bois was among its founders : NAACP. Stumped immediately. Did not know who this Du Bois guy was. He's the first African-American graduate of Harvard.

6. Coot's cousin : RAIL. Oh, man, I did not know coot is a bird. Always associate it with old & crotchety person. We also have ERNE (15A. Coastal predator).

Our Crossword Corner blog team photo series ends today with two recent pictures of the beautiful Melissa Bee from her Girls Weekend Out (Santa Cruz) trip. Here is Kaya and Melissa (in pink scarf). Here are the girls on the wharf. For more delicious pictures, click here.

Aug 26, 2010

Theme: "Hit the..." Idioms - Spelled out in the clues for 22D HIT and 42D THE which reference each other: Words that can precede the answers to starred clues. Please see the note from constructor Don Gagliardo at the end of my write-up for his theme inspiration.

1A. *Bag: SACK. Hit the sack: Go to bed.

5A. *Pump output: GAS. Hit the gas: Step on it.

8A. *Follow: TRAIL. Hit the trail: Take a hike.

16A. *Road surface: PAVEMENT. Hit the pavement: Get moving.

18A. *Holdup causes?: BRAKES. Hit the brakes: Cut it out.

28A. *Rain protection: ROOF. Hit the roof: To the moon, Alice!

44A. *Grilling site: DECK. Hit the deck: Duck!

59A. *Cola holder: BOTTLE. Hit the bottle: Get drunk.

60A. *Range target: BULL'S -EYE. Hit the bull's-eye: Right on.

64A. *Warehouse aids: SKIDS. Hit the skids: Bottom out.

65A. *Guinea pig food: HAY. Hit the hay: Get some sleep.

66A. *Location: SPOT. Hit the spot: I'm stuffed.

22D. With 42-Down, words that can precede the answers to the starred clues: HIT

Wow, 14 theme entries (total 66 theme squares) in a weekday puzzle, including the two tip off down clues. Pretty impressive effort to squeeze that many in symmetrically. None of the theme answers is longer than 8-letter due to the unique theme.

There are probably a few more answers that might work: books, bricks, road, lights, floor, wall...how many more can you come up with? I found solving this one pretty easy, more like a Tuesday perhaps. I didn't officially time myself, but I know it was well under 10 minutes, and I didn't even see several of the clues until I added them here.

Across:

13. Longtime portrait studio __ Mills: OLAN. I wonder if they use 36A. Like many cameras: DIGITAL.

14. Strasbourg street: RUE. French city, french word for street.

15. For this reason: HENCE. Sounds like a word you would hear in ye olde shoppe.

39. It might be cheap: THRILL. Old English þyrlian, from þyrel "hole", originally meant to pierce, penetrate. To give a shivering, exciting feeling was a metaphoric notion of being pierced with emotion.

"This is one of those puzzles where you are going along in conversation, you hear something that sounds interesting, and you go, “What was that that sounded so interesting?” You need to carry a notebook to catch these. I thought HIT THE ____ was an interesting idiom that should be explored. I was pleased to cram in as many theme words as I did, as usual giving myself fits trying to fill around them. One lucky insight that I had was to put HIT THE down the middle, divided by a black square. I don’t think that is something solvers see very often, and I thought it would be fun. I hope you all enjoyed it."

54. Demand payment from : DUN. Word origin & history of dun. "to insist on payment of debt," 1620s, perhaps related to dunnen "to sound, resound, make a din," or shortened from dunkirk (c.1600) "privateer," a private vessel licensed to attack enemy ships during wartime, from Dunkirk , French port from which they sailed. Yet another, less likely, theory traces it to a Joe Dun , supposedly a London bailiff famous for catching defaulters.